Many new homesteaders ask, “How do you afford buying homestead land?” Here is what drives up land prices and action tips so you can afford farmland.
One question many new and aspiring homesteaders have is, “How do you afford land?” How do you get into owning your own property and buying homestead land? That can be as little as an acre or as much as a hundred acres or more. Each farmer and homesteader has their preference as to how much land they want, what kind of homestead land they want, what type of land they want.
I recently posted on Facebook about land ownership, the amount of land available in the United States, and how much land in our country is foreign-owned. It’s a staggering, surprising amount of land here in the United States. It’s something that is continuing to push up land prices throughout the country.
Let’s get into land prices, land locations, and some of the things that drive up pricing such as foreign land ownership. It’s a really important conversation we need to have, especially in these times. Then we’re going to cover some things that can help you find homestead land like buying undesirable land or starting small, changing laws, community buys, and how to save cash.
My husband and I and our family are in the process of searching for homestead land right now. We have been homesteading for about 10 years and currently live on a half-acre homestead in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Virginia is not the most amazing state to homestead in, but most of our small rural counties don’t have many restrictions on homesteading or farming. In fact, Virginia is an extremely big farming state. It always has been. I grew up in the farm community. My grandfather was a farmer and you knew all the farmers. I grew up in a town that was a stop sign on a map. Everybody knew everybody. It was a nice farm community.
When we first started homesteading we bought a half-acre foreclosure with a house in a wooded subdivision. Thankfully the subdivision doesn’t have many restrictions and the restrictions they did have, we all threw out the window. We all have chickens and goats and ducks and all those fun things. But now that we’ve been into this for a few years, we’re okay living here. I could live here the rest of my life. We can do a lot on a half-acre. We’ve produced hundreds and hundreds of pounds of meat from this property. We’ve produced probably thousands of pounds of produce from this property. It’s been a challenge, but we’ve learned the property and how to work with what the property has to offer us. I might not be able to grow the most amazing abundance of fruits and vegetables, but I can grow quite a bit of food.
But we have been saving up for years to purchase more homestead land. We’re feeling that nudge.
We really want to kind of get into larger land ownership. Ultimately, my goal with Homesteaders of America is to have a large property of 50 to 100 acres, large enough so we can host the conference there. We could also turn part of the property into an educational farm experience where people could come and learn how to farm through workshops and other activities.
I’ve been looking for years and, knowing the value of land, it still shocks me to see so many people charging an outrageous amount of money for a property. We’re talking millions of dollars for a 25-acre property in the county over from us with a 3,000 square foot house. It better be springing up gold because that’s outrageous! Of course, I am about 70 miles outside of Washington DC, which makes a difference for sure. But when I started looking in other locations in Virginia and it’s the same. There has to be a reason, right? Most of these farmers are not like, “Oh, well, I’m just going to charge $3 million for my hundred acres. And anybody’s going to give me that right now.”
There is a large family farm in the county over from us that has been for sale for years. It is a beautiful farm and wish I could own it. It has 400+ acres and beautiful farmhouses would make it a great community or family piece of property. I’ve been watching it for years and they’ve never come down on their price and I believe they just wanted somebody to come in that would take care of it and not subdivide it. So in some situations, they out-price themselves because they want someone who really cares about the property to purchase it. They’re very selective, but more often than not, large parcels of land, and even now smaller parcels of land, are going for an outrageous amount of money because there are individuals willing to pay that.
And it’s who is buying this land that is disturbing.
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